This plugin hasnt been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.

WP-LDAP

Description

This plugin turns your WordPress Dashboard into a familiar management interface for an enterprise-scale LDAP Directory Information Tree (DIT). Configure a connection to your LDAPv3 directory server, and from then on any modifications you make to your WordPress user database through the WordPress admin screens will be reflected in your LDAP database. This offers a simpler and more convenient front-end for managing user account information to support single sign-on (SSO), identity management, and other enterprise functions.

Donations for this plugin make up a chunk of my income. If you continue to enjoy this plugin, please consider making a donation. 🙂 Thank you for your support!

All user accounts on the WordPress side are mirrored as inetOrgPerson (RFC 2798) entries on the LDAP side. The following WordPress user account fields to LDAP attribute translations take place when a new WordPress user is created:

The WordPress user_login field becomes the uid attribute in the LDAP database.

The WordPress user_email field becomes the mail attribute in the LDAP database.

The WordPress display_name field becomes the displayName attribute in the LDAP database.

The WordPress user_pass field becomes the userPassword attribute in the LDAP database.

There is no mapping for the WordPress user ID number on the LDAP side. Instead, users are uniquely identified by their fully-qualified Distinguished Name (DN). A user’s DN is automatically composed by combining their WordPress user_login with the WordPress Multisite’s configured LDAP Search Base setting. For instance, by default, a WordPress Multisite with WP-LDAP installed running at https://example.com/ with a user whose username is exampleuser will automatically be mirrored over LDAP to the user identified as uid=exampleuser,dc=example,dc=com.

In addition to the above mappings, the following optional mappings also take place if or when the user updates their user profile:

The WordPress first_name field becomes the givenName attribute in the LDAP database.

The WordPress last_name field becomes the sn attribute in the LDAP database.

The WordPress nickname field becomes the cn attribute in the LDAP database.

The WordPress description field becomes the description attribute in the LDAP database.

The WordPress user_url field becomes the labeledURI attribute in the LDAP database.

Moreover, WP-LDAP is aware of certain features provided by other plugins. These include:

The WordPress user’s S/MIME certificate (smime_certificate field) becomes the userSMIMECertificate attribute in the LDAP database. (This functionality is provided by the WP PGP Encrypted Emails plugin and that plugin must be installed and activated for this to work.)

This plugin is designed for medium to large deployments of WordPress Multisite (or Multi-Network) instances, originally developed as a collaboration with the Glocal Coop’s Activist Network Platform project. If you run multiple WordPress Multisite Networks, you can configure each WP Network with different LDAP settings. This plugin does not currently support single-site installs; please post an issue on GitHub if you want to use LDAP data stores with a WP single-site install and we can discuss use cases.
This plugin is free software, but grocery stores do not offer free food. Donations for this plugin make up a chunk of my income. If you continue to enjoy this plugin, please consider making a donation. 🙂 Thank you for your support!

Enter the LDAP URI referring to where your server is listening for connections. (Only ldaps:/// is usable for remote connections; an unsecured ldap:/// connection URI will only be accepted if the server IP address is 127.0.0.1. Please read the remarks at OpenLDAP Administrator Guide § Security Considerations for more information.)

Enter the binding DN and its password.

Optionally, enter a custom search base, or accept the default. (The default for a WordPress Multisite at example.com is dc=example,dc=com.)

Requirements

The PHP LDAP extension must be installed. On a Debian system, this is usually as simple as running sudo apt install php-ldap. The plugin will automatically deactivate itself if this requirement is not met.

Your WordPress installation must be configured as a Multisite instance. (WordPress single-site installs are not currently supported.)

You must be able to bind to an LDAPv3 directory server. (LDAPv2 is not supported.)

To configure the LDAP connection over the Web interface, you must be able to serve your website over HTTPS. (Unsecured HTTP Web-based configuration is not supported.)

Configuration

If your web server does not serve pages over HTTPS, you will need to use the WP-CLI or the mysql command-line client to configure the plugin as follows:

Of course, you should replace the specific details shown above with values appropriate for your deployment. You should also consider configuring your LDAP server such that the bound DN has restrictive access controls enforced on it, as its password must be stored in the clear within WordPress’s database for the plugin to function.

Security

The extreme convenience this plugin offers makes it even more important that you take your LDAP DIT’s security seriously. Here are some highly recommended additional configuration steps you should take if setting up a directory server for the first time.

OpenLDAP slapd(8) will by default listen on both the IPv4 and IPv6 “any” address, exposing your directory contents to the Internet if you have not configured a firewall. Worse, the unsecured ldap:// protocol is used out-of-the-box, which will further expose the contents of LDAP traffic to eavesdroppers. This is almost certainly not what you want.

The above shows us that slapd is still listening for connections on any configured IP address, but only with the secured ldaps:// scheme (LDAP over TLS). It is still accepting unsecured connections, but only on IP address 127.0.0.1, the local host. This means cleartext LDAP traffic is not transiting the network; it is contained within the machine itself, only traveling over the loopback interface.

On a typical Debian GNU/Linux system, you invoke slapd as sudo service slapd start (which runs the /etc/init.d/slapd script). This sources the file at /etc/default/slapd to set the invocation arguments. Look for the SLAPD_SERVICES variable in the /etc/default/slapd file and set it to sensible values, as shown above, to make the change persistent across system reboots.

Enter the LDAP URI referring to where your server is listening for connections. (Only ldaps:/// is usable for remote connections; an unsecured ldap:/// connection URI will only be accepted if the server IP address is 127.0.0.1. Please read the remarks at OpenLDAP Administrator Guide § Security Considerations for more information.)

Enter the binding DN and its password.

Optionally, enter a custom search base, or accept the default. (The default for a WordPress Multisite at example.com is dc=example,dc=com.)

Requirements

The PHP LDAP extension must be installed. On a Debian system, this is usually as simple as running sudo apt install php-ldap. The plugin will automatically deactivate itself if this requirement is not met.

Your WordPress installation must be configured as a Multisite instance. (WordPress single-site installs are not currently supported.)

You must be able to bind to an LDAPv3 directory server. (LDAPv2 is not supported.)

To configure the LDAP connection over the Web interface, you must be able to serve your website over HTTPS. (Unsecured HTTP Web-based configuration is not supported.)

Configuration

If your web server does not serve pages over HTTPS, you will need to use the WP-CLI or the mysql command-line client to configure the plugin as follows:

Of course, you should replace the specific details shown above with values appropriate for your deployment. You should also consider configuring your LDAP server such that the bound DN has restrictive access controls enforced on it, as its password must be stored in the clear within WordPress’s database for the plugin to function.

Security

The extreme convenience this plugin offers makes it even more important that you take your LDAP DIT’s security seriously. Here are some highly recommended additional configuration steps you should take if setting up a directory server for the first time.

OpenLDAP slapd(8) will by default listen on both the IPv4 and IPv6 “any” address, exposing your directory contents to the Internet if you have not configured a firewall. Worse, the unsecured ldap:// protocol is used out-of-the-box, which will further expose the contents of LDAP traffic to eavesdroppers. This is almost certainly not what you want.

The above shows us that slapd is still listening for connections on any configured IP address, but only with the secured ldaps:// scheme (LDAP over TLS). It is still accepting unsecured connections, but only on IP address 127.0.0.1, the local host. This means cleartext LDAP traffic is not transiting the network; it is contained within the machine itself, only traveling over the loopback interface.

On a typical Debian GNU/Linux system, you invoke slapd as sudo service slapd start (which runs the /etc/init.d/slapd script). This sources the file at /etc/default/slapd to set the invocation arguments. Look for the SLAPD_SERVICES variable in the /etc/default/slapd file and set it to sensible values, as shown above, to make the change persistent across system reboots.

Contributors & Developers

“WP-LDAP” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.